


Another One

by sagiow



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship/Love, Making the best of a terrible situation, Nothing happy happens here, OTPs exit stage left, Post-Canon, Rare Pairings, if you want happy stuff check out the Avengers AUs on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29851413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow
Summary: There was routine in the madness, and in routine, comfort. Perhaps it could be enough.
Relationships: Jedediah "Jed" Foster/Emma Green
Comments: 12
Kudos: 6





	Another One

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry Fericita

They were different people, then.

It had begun with him, returning from Boston that rainy December evening, alone and bereft. His dark gaze heavy yet empty as he averted it from a future now infinitely bleaker, his oft-delayed effort too little, too late.

She had taken his arm, led him to his couch, made him coffee - the real kind, the good kind, the one they saved for when nothing else would do. She had reached for his hand as her eyes filled, and he had taken it as his blurred, the tears cresting at long last, and flowing on through the night, their joined hands their only tether to a reality they both prayed to escape.

It had continued with her, that cloudy January afternoon, standing firm on the porch of Mansion House despite the cold, impervious to the nordic gale and the taunts of her sister, the pleas of her mother, the threats of her father. She had not budged when their stagecoach left, abandoning Alexandria for the Southern refuge of their Savannah relatives, their daughter along with it. She had not moved when it disappeared from view, as had her brother’s lone horse, under the cover of night, for lands unknown. She only flinched when he placed his hand on her shoulder, relaxed when he squeezed it lightly, drawing a smile from her lips, if not from her eyes, “This is my home,” she said as her chin rose again, her shoulders squared. “This is where I belong.”

She had stayed out of duty, out of faith, out of the uncrossable chasm that had grown between her family’s beliefs and her own. She had chosen work over her former gentle life, her new friends over her old, but mostly, she had chosen Love, of which the young buds had only just begun to blossom along with the new year. And so that bright February morning, when she had woken and found only a letter where Love had lain, the words of guilt and apology final and most unblessed by St.Valentine, her cry of anguish had resonated through the halls.

Once more, Jedidiah Foster raced to the docks to prevent a Yankee’s departure; once more, he returned, alone and bereft. She had raced to him in the street, the hope in her blue eyes stabbed with every sorry shake of his head, with every punch of her clenched fists again his chest, until she collapsed against him, and he held her close as she sobbed violently, the scene too familiar for the passersby to draw anything but sympathetic sighs.

“Don’t you worry,” he soothed, repeatedly. “He is a fool, he will come back.”

But come back, he did not. From their colleagues, from the odd missive the doctor received but never the nurse, they heard of a New York regiment joined; of battles fought, of hymns sung, of flags raised. Of a departure for Massachusetts. Of an arrival in France. That last letter, Jedidiah had torn and tossed across the room, kicking and stomping the bits into oblivion. “He is more than a fool. He is a goddamn wretch. And with her! HER! To Hell with them both! They are dead to me! Dead and cursed a thousand times over!” 

He had knelt by her then, taking the sodden, shredded handkerchief from her hand and replacing it with his own. “Forget him, Emma. He is not worth your tears. This is where you belong. We’ll be your family now.”

They were different people, then.

She took her broken heart and poured its scattered pieces into her work. Anne Hastings took her under her wing, her fierce talons and sharp beak protecting the youngling as she took flight, and soon soared as high as her teacher. Not a moment too soon, as once Anne’s condition became unconcealable, Hastings became Hale and left the hospital, the student now replacing the master. 

Matron Brannan stepped up then, to help the new Head Nurse grow into her role, until an infinitely more helpless girl appeared, her own growth uncertain, her mother much weakened by her arrival, her father, by his family’s fragile fate. All three, once formidable foes to anyone who might dare stand against them, now supplicants against the whims of Life. Such were the effects of children.

There were other children, in Charlotte Jenkins’s camp, children with scraped knees and runny noses, with eyes bright with the wonders of winter, with the fever that sometimes came with it. They tended them as they did the boys in the ward, and mourned them even more when their efforts were in vain. In the camp as in the operating theater, under the cover of chloroform, Samuel took note of her dexterous fingers, and trained them to the various sutures and procedures he had learned as clandestinely as she now did, all the better to assist him when Hale’s presence grew scarce, and when Foster’s became less assured, the phantom of a new demon claiming possession over his body and slowing it in his unyielding grasp. A ghost he hid from all eyes, that only hers managed to see, and never then let it leave her sight.

And so, side by side, they labored on, the Head Nurse and the Chief Medical Officer of Mansion House Hospital. Soldiers came and went, doctors and nurses as well, but they remained at their post, never wavering. There was never a delicate surgery where her leveled head and hidden skills were not required, a difficult diagnosis and uncommon treatment on which his sharp mind and experience were not requested. There was never a morning when the day’s plans were not discussed over breakfast, an evening when the day’s work was not reviewed over tea. There was routine in the madness of war, and in routine, comfort; with comfort grew trust, and warmth, and for the first time in months, one day, laughter. 

There were books shared and discussed, her Greek impressively as good as his Latin; their common appreciation for _Varney the Vampire_ , even more so. There was Apple Charlotte for his birthday, Victoria sponge cake with fresh raspberries for hers, with much beseeching to please sit down for just a minute and enjoy it on both counts. There were small presents for Christmas, thoughtful tokens that drew surprised smiles, shared over secretely stashed sherry in the empty staff room while their colleagues attended the service at Christ Church.

There was the shared memory of the lives they had known, forever ago, when the Confederacy was still just a dream. Of the traditions it now fought to preserve, some cherished, but most looked back at with queasy regret, the same way a hungover drunk eyes the bottle, the dreadful morning after; and for him, with the same uncontrollable tremors. There was talk of what tomorrow might bring, and tomorrow’s eventual tomorrow, once the war was won, or God forbid, lost; but mostly, there was simply the need to make it through tomorrow, and make it better than today.

They were different people, then, as the months turned to years, baby Nancy into a ginger toddler, the hoopskirted girl into a wise woman, the excitable Captain into a wizened Colonel, the repute of Mansion House into the finest hospital in Virginia. There was routine in the madness, and the madness never quelled, the work never tarried. Until one day, the bugle rang, and then no more. A cry went out across the city, the stateline, the whole of the preserved Union. In the ward, patients cheered, the staff clapping each other on the back, the nuns and nurses, in their arms. They found themselves in each other’s, and did not let go until Sister Isabella cut in. 

Slowly, the patients left, and none replaced them. The nuns returned to their convent, the officers, to their homes. The doctors were last to leave: Hale took his family back to Missouri, Nancy’s beloved Maimeó in tow. Samuel packed his bag and his letter of recommendation and once more, traveled the long dreamed road to Philadelphia, Charlotte promising to follow soon, but not just yet. There were people still to set on their ways, some that would see them end in that new plot of land south of the city. No matter their destination, she would see that they arrived safely.

They were different people, now, as they stood alone in Mansion House’s great deserted room, that now bore no more ressemblance to the ward it had recently been than to the dining room of days long gone. When the time whence they belonged to either was resolutly passed.

“What will you do?” she asked, and he could only shrug. There was always the plantation that could be reclaimed. A private practice that could be opened; general, not surgical. They had spoken of the various possibilities many times, yet all remained elusive and undesirable, now that the moment to choose was at hand.

“What will you do?” he replied, and she could only shake her head. Her prospects were not as enticing as his, they were both well aware of it. 

“Where to go…” she said, her eyes through the window, on the road so many had walked away on, never to return. Gone in so many directions, that she could not follow. Yet staying put was worst of all. “I’ve remained in Alexandria my whole life. I think I should like to see more of the world.”

“A wonderful idea. Would you like to see Africa, India, Europe? Perhaps Venice or Vienna? Fine dining, finer fashions. All your former training finally put to profit, so your beauty and grace may turn the head of some duke or bar- prince.”

She did not remark upon his words, the ones spoken and those almost. “I would, for you've always spoken of it so fondly, although the only training I care to put to profit is the one I received here. From Anne, from Samuel. From you, most of all.”

He did as she had. “There are medical colleges for women in New England, if you wanted to expand upon it. Perhaps I might be able to secure a lecturer position there, or researcher, for the time my treacherous hands will allow me still.”

“I could be your hands,” she heard herself say, in a voice unlike her own. “I could be more than that.”

The cautious light that had begun to brighten his expression suddenly dimmed; at once, he grew older, and sighed. “You could be so much more than that, Emma. Do not waste it all on an old broken man.”

“We’re both broken-”

“No,” he cut her short. “I know this disease well, from my time with Charcot; it will break me, then seize me, and waste me away. But you! You might have been mightily tried, and tested by the hardships of war, but they have made you stronger, wiser than your young years. You are a hundred times the woman who walked into the ward, in that ridiculous, murderous fashion contraption of yours. You can achieve anything now. Don’t you yearn for a better life? One more comfortable, or exciting? For companionship... for a family of your own?” 

He did not say Love; Love was a word neither could utter anymore. A word neither needed to.

Instead, she closed the distance between them. “This is what we already have, Jed. You are my family, as you promised you would be.” She slid her fingers through his. “This is where I belong.”

He hesitated for an instant, avoiding her searching gaze, before finally meeting it, the light returned to his, and lifting their joined hands against his chest. "Then I also promise you this: I will spend every day henceforth making sure I am deserving of it. You shall want for nothing."

The radiant smile she bestowed him did nothing to alleviate his perceived debt. "I can't expect that I should ever want more than just a home with you, be it in New England... or New Delhi. Or perhaps that other Alexandria; I hear it has a fine library."

He had to laugh then. "And here I was so hoping for a new waistcoast or two in fine Italian silk. But as you wish, Peaseblossom: it shall be mummies instead of vampires for our next guilty pleasure read."

They were different people, but they were all the other needed.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> middlemarch prompted me "Jed / Emma, WWII French Resistance" for the AU Meme I'll Never Write game we had on Tumblr, and it got Fericita and I thinking that maybe Jededemma (...) wasn't the most improbable crackship in the lot of rare pairs that emerged from our little challenge. 
> 
> So here's another non-AU canon-compliant shot at it. The research needed for the WWII version was way too daunting.
> 
> Emma's fandom official nickname returns! It first appeared in middlemarch's "to know the thing I am forbidden to know" but has resurfaced in other writers' work since.
> 
> Varney the Vampire was mentionned by Annebronterocks in the comments of "Beyond the strife of fleets heroic" (my other Jed-Emma story, although definitely more - than /) as the Victorian equivalent of Twilight; I'm thrilled to have finally found a place to plug it in!


End file.
